The Hot List: March 2013

A novel disguised as a self-help guide, Mohsin Hamid’s hotly anticipated new book tells the story of young love between capitalism and the latest target of its cupid’s arrow: Asia. Through one smitten tycoon’s get-rich-quick scheme, Hamid considers ambition’s deep effect on relationships and just how fickle a precipice opportunity can be. Hamid is one to watch—he has been since writing The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2008), whose film adaptation by Mira Nair opens in theaters next month. And How to Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, out March 5, is one to read—political, romantic, exciting, and a page-turner throughout.

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Courtesy Mark Webber

The End of Love

Mark Webber’s experimental flick, The End of Love, about a boy and his father coping with the death of the woman in their lives pulls a difficult (and kind of The Truman Show-reminiscent) stunt: casting Webber’s 2-year-old son Isaac as the lead without ever telling him. Almost wholly improvised, the movie features Amanda Seyfried and Michael Cera hanging out with Mark, who plays his depressed real-life doppelganger, and Isaac, who’s just keeping it real. “He was the barometer, the gauge for us to match up to,” Webber told Bazaar about the movie, out March 1. The result? Some amazing improvisation and America’s saddest home videos. (Photo courtesy Mark Webber)

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Courtesy ITV Studios for Masterpiece

“Mr. Selfridge”

On March 31, Andrew Davies’ series about the man who sold shopping to London premieres on PBS’ Masterpiece Classic starring Jeremy Piven as Mr. Selfridge. Based on the non-fiction book by Lindy Woodhead , “Mr. Selfridge” delves into the merchandising revolution that hit the retail industry when Mr. Selfridge opened England’s first department store. Think “Downton Abbey” but in the big city instead of the countryside manor—and more clothes.

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Courtesy Slvie Fleury and Salon 94, NY

Sylvie Fleury at Salon 94 Bowery

One who sometimes slips under the radar next to the likes of Hirst, Sachs, and Koons, the Swiss multimedia pop artist Sylvie Fleury has a lot in common with her contemporaries buts adds a feminine, and sometimes feminist, perspective to a genre of art that’s a bit of a boys club. Fleury’s work is full of whimsical and witty commentary on the fashion and beauty industries, general consumerism, and the fetishization of both. Her exhibition at Salon 94 Bowery titled “It Might As Well Rain Until September” opens March 9.

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Courtesy Rizzoli, 2013

M to M of M/M (Paris)

When Michaël Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak founded the indie design company M/M in Paris in 1992, they became leaders in a new era of graphic design. Rizzoli’s new coffee table bible, curated and narrated by design historian Emily King, pays tribute to the pair and the amazing projects they’ve collaborated on with artists, designers, and musicians from Prada and Givenchy to Yamamoto, Björk, and Kanye West. Brought into perspective by interviews with critics and artists who’ve watched M/M’s body of work develop over the past three decades, including Glenn O’Brien, Pierre Huyghe, and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, King’s book, titled M to M of M/M (Paris) and out March 5, is a veritable feast of eye candy (and an easily digestible history lesson).

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Oz: The Great and the Powerful

The wonderful wizard is back in director Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful (out March 8), a prequel to the 1939 Technicolor favorite with a star-studded cast including James Franco, Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, and Zach Braff (as a monkey).

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Courtesy South by Southwest

SXSW

The festival that gives rise to some of the most exciting, new acts every year is blitzing Austin with music, parties, lectures, film screenings, and a rising number of interactive tech events March 7-18. Yenta of the music world, South by Southwest is the stuff great collaborations are made of (You’ll seldom hear of a side project whose backstory doesn’t begin “We were playing at SXSW…”). This year’s lineup includes Vampire Weekend, Fitz and the Tantrums, Sky Ferreira, Macklemore and an abundance of delightful unknowns.

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Top of the Lake

A little “Twin Peaks,” a little “The Killing,” and altogether haunting, Jane Campion’s Sundance original series “Top of the Lake,” premiering March 18 centers on Elisabeth Moss aka detective Robin Griffin’s search for a vanished twelve-year-old girl last seen standing in a frozen lake.

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David Bowie is

In partnership with Gucci, London’s V&A is elevating glam rock’s front man to the larger-than-life heights he occupies with the first major retrospective dedicated to Bowie. Opening March 11, “David Bowie is” consists of multimedia displays of Bowie’s collaborations with designers and artists as well as personal items like handwritten set lists, storyboards, musical scores, and set designs. The sensory overload culminates the next day with Bowie’s first studio record in a decade, “The Next Day” (March 12). (There are several photos on there and an image credit sheet. I recommend the Wild Boys pic, which is courtesy V&A images)

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Courtesy The Museum of Modern Art/ Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

Garry Winogrand at SFMOMA

When the great postwar street photographer died suddenly in 1984, he left behind a huge archive of undeveloped films he’d shot. Nearly 100 of them will be developed and edited specifically for this exhibition, which opens at SFMOMA March 9.

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Rihanna Diamonds World Tour

RiRi starts her globe trotting on March 8 in Buffalo, where A$AP Rocky will join her on stage and continue to do so until David Guetta takes over in Europe. Can’t wait to see what cuts and colors her longtime stylist, the brilliant Mel Ottenberg, will have her shining in.

When two brothers are called back to their childhood home in Maine years after their father’s accidental death there, sibling tensions mollified by distance and time come surging to the surface. Following her Pulitzer Prize-winning 2009 short story collection Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout’s Burgess Boys explores the delicate dynamic of a traumatized family and the immense power a place can have to turn adults back into the children they used to be. (Photo courtesy Random House)

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The Book of My Lives

Aleksandar Hemon’s first non-fiction book (following Nowhere Men and The Lazarus Project) is both a coming-of-age story and an ode to two cities. Hemon is a writer’s writer; recounting his departure from a life of street soccer in Sarajevo, Bosnia, to watch war break out from afar in Chicago with his new family, Hemon can provoke the whole gallery of emoji without being sensationalist or overly sentimental. The Book of My Lives, a memoir in essays, comes out March 19. (Photo courtesy Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

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Lucky Guy

Theater geeks rejoice: Tom Hanks is making his Broadway debut on March 1 in Nora Ephron’s play Lucky Guy, a true story of New York in the 1980s and the quick rise and demise of tabloid journalist Mike McAlary.

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